Petraeus, Crocker praise Iraq gains

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Tuesday told the Senate that the situation in Iraq has improved greatly but that challenges remain.

The duo, in testimony before the Armed Services Committee, also urged lawmakers to not allow the “snapshot” of recent fighting in Basra to cloud the overall picture.

{mosads}“Since Ambassador Crocker and I appeared before you seven months ago there has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq,” Petraeus said in his opening statement. However, he added that “the situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain.”

Petraeus and Crocker face the difficult task of convincing a Democratic-led Congress and a skeptical country that staying the course begun with the troop surge at the beginning of last year is the right way to proceed.

In addition to a myriad of critical questions most Democrats and some Republicans are expected to ask, the two officials are also finding themselves plunged into the middle of the 2008 presidential race, as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will all participate in one of the two hearings Tuesday.

With questions looming over whether the U.S. is doing too much and Iraqis too little, both Crocker and Petraeus stressed that Iraq is stepping up.

Petraeus noted that Iraq added over 100,000 new troops and police to its security forces since last year, while Crocker stated that the era of major infrastructure projects funded by the U.S. “is over.”